Php assigning multiple strings to a single variable

Question

Is there a cleaner way to assign multiple strings to a single variable in php?

I current do like this

<?php
$myStr = '';

$myStr .= 'John';
$myStr .= '<br>';
$myStr .= 'Paul';
$myStr .= '<br>';
$myStr .= 'Ringo';

echo $myStr;
?>

I also use HEREDOC. But are there other ways?

This simple example can be reduced to a one liner, but maybe you should provide more context to your question. — Pier-Luc Gendreau, Jun 12 '13 at 03:30
@NullPoiиteя Because it would be so obvious that I assume these are some kind of variables containing different strings that are not hard-coded in the script. — Antony, Jun 12 '13 at 03:32
Think i'll go with the array method. Looks cleaner and easy to manage. — Norman, Jun 12 '13 at 03:38
@Antony if there are variables then why not `$myStr = "$name
Paul
Ringo";`? — vee, Jun 12 '13 at 03:42
cleaner is not always better way .... if i were you i would use string concatenation method — NullPoiиteя, Jun 12 '13 at 03:42
Later if you want to get particular value out of string. Then you will have to explode it etc.. So why dont you use array and push new elements to it? It will be easy to manipulate. — sravis, Jun 12 '13 at 03:36

Marcelo Pascual · Answer 1 · 2013-06-12T03:43:30.333

4

If you have to concatenate lot of data, it may be a good idea to use arrays. It's cleaner (not necessarily more memory efficient).

$items = array('Hello', 'How', 'Are', 'You?');
echo implode(' ', $items);

edited Jun 12 '13 at 03:43

answered Jun 12 '13 at 03:31

Marcelo Pascual

3

A memory consuming and [slow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4502654/php-many-concats-or-one-implode) idea. – BlitZ Jun 12 '13 at 03:34
2

at least it answer the question in not an ironic way – NullPoiиteя Jun 12 '13 at 03:39
@NullPoiиteя Yes, sure. It depends on situation. There might be even a special class for OP's needs. – BlitZ Jun 12 '13 at 03:41

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 12 '13 at 04:39

3

It can be done by array and implode() like below

$names = array('John', 'Paul', 'Ringo');
$myStr = implode("<br>", $array);
echo $myStr;

edited Jun 12 '13 at 04:39

Luke Mills

answered Jun 12 '13 at 03:35

pita

2

2 DownVoter. Please, be more constructive. Supply downvotes with comments. – BlitZ Jun 12 '13 at 03:44

2 Answers2